the time movie review

• Election 2024
• Entertainment
• Newsletters
• Photography
• Personal Finance
• AP Investigations
• AP Buyline Personal Finance
• AP Buyline Shopping
• Press Releases
• Israel-Hamas War
• Russia-Ukraine War
• Global elections
• Asia Pacific
• Latin America
• Middle East
• Election Results
• Delegate Tracker
• AP & Elections
• Auto Racing
• 2024 Paris Olympic Games
• Movie reviews
• Book reviews
• Financial Markets
• Business Highlights
• Financial wellness
• Artificial Intelligence
• Social Media

Film Review: ‘Time’ a terrific look at the pull of loss

This image released by Amazon Studios shows a scene from “Time.” (Amazon Studios via AP)

This image released by Amazon Studios shows Sibil Fox Richardson, left, and her husband Robert in a scene from “Time.” (Amazon Studios via AP)

• Copy Link copied

There is a scene in the documentary “Time” that captures a woman on the phone trying to speak to a judge’s clerk. She’s put on hold. Nothing happens as the seconds tick away. One minute becomes two. The woman is still, waiting patiently. Eventually, she gets through but the call comes to nothing.

Most filmmakers would leave that tedious moment on the cutting room floor, but not director Garrett Bradley, who is making her first nonfiction feature. Her film is precisely about wasted time. “Time” is a story about loss and patience and an unjust system that demands both.

The woman on the phone is Sibil Fox Richardson and she’s trying to get her husband released from prison while also raising six boys. “Time” is her story, augmented by video diary entries she made for her husband, locked up in the Louisiana State Penitentiary.

Bradley weaves these incredibly intimate videos with her own footage of Richardson and her family, always unrushed. A young son is seen sleeping or putting on socks. The slow pan out from a grandmother’s face. A son simply eating. People chatting before an event. All while a lazy piano plays.

“Time” had its world premiere at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, where Bradley was awarded best director for U.S. documentary, becoming the first Black woman to win that prize. “Time” deserves every award it gets: It is terrific filmmaking, augmented by the woman at its center, a formidable and charismatic figure.

Richardson and her husband, Robert, both spent time for the attempted armed robbery of a credit union to help keep their urban clothes store afloat. No money was stolen and the culprits were all first-time offenders. She served three years; her husband got a 60-year sentence in 1999.

This black and white film is not about guilt or innocence. It’s about the cost one family has had to bear. Richardson was pregnant with twins when their father was locked up; the film captures them on the cusp of turning 18. “They have no idea what fathers even do,” she says.

The filmmakers go back and forth in time, juxtaposing images of 20 years ago with recent footage. Toddlers become men, men go back to kindergartners. There is always something missing — a husband and a father.

“Time is when you look at pictures of when your babies were small. And then you look at them and you see that they have mustaches and beards,” Richardson says. “And that the biggest hope that you have was that before they turned into men, that they would have a chance to be with their father.”

The personal gets political as Richardson argues that the national prison system is just a modern form of slavery. “Listen, my story is the story of over 2 million people in the United States of America,” she says. She becomes an advocate and a dynamite public speaker. But above all, there is love, an unwavering, fierce love for a man she can only visit twice a month.

Among the interesting things about Bradley’s approach is the film’s color palette. She has chosen to strip the home movies of color and present her own modern footage in the same monochrome, giving the different parts of the film a knitted smoothness and timelessness, a wheel that keeps spinning.

The last few moments contain some of the most exhilarating and moving moments ever committed to film and Bradley’s reversing of video images — ending with a kiss — is simply gorgeous, poetic filmmaking. “Time” is very much worth everyone’s time.

“Time,” an Amazon Studios release, is rated PG-13 for language and adult situations. Running time: 81 minutes. Four stars out of four.

MPAA Definition of PG-13: Parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

Online: https://amzn.to/34kxpwE

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Movie Reviews

It's 'about time' for romance — and rather more.

Joel Arnold

In About Time , Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) learns that he's inherited the ability to travel back and forth in time — and uses the gift to pursue love and a life with Mary (Rachel McAdams). Murray Close/Universal Pictures hide caption

In About Time , Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) learns that he's inherited the ability to travel back and forth in time — and uses the gift to pursue love and a life with Mary (Rachel McAdams).

• Director: Richard Curtis
• Genre: Romantic Comedy
• Running Time: 123 minutes

Rated R for language and some sexual content.

With: Domhnall Gleeson , Rachel McAdams , Bill Nighy

(Recommended)

Time-travel movies usually have a clear end in sight, some situation that needs fixing. Marty McFly needs his parents to get together; John Connor needs to avoid Terminators long enough to grow up; the guys from Hot Tub Time Machine need to stop messing up the past and get back in their ... hot tub time machine.

When the imperative and the ticking clock are removed, though, the time-travel power becomes a subtler narrative gimmick. About Time deploys it to tell a small, personal story — the sort where a father sits his son down in his study on the kid's 21 birthday to tell him about a family secret. Here, it's that both of them — all the men in their family, in fact — can travel in time. (Whether or why the women don't inherit the same ability goes unaddressed.)

It's a big deal, sure, but it's not limitless. As his cheerful father (Bill Nighy) explains, Tim (Domnhall Gleeson) can Quantum Leap within his own lifetime, jumping to a moment in his past and then back to the now. Narrowing the scope and defining the stakes of the movie, Dad cautions him against using the ability for money or power — other relatives have, with inauspicious results — and instead to pursue what he truly cares about. For his dad, it's family and good books. For the bright-eyed Tim, it's love.

Lanky, well-meaning, but not the smoothest with women, Tim uses his ability to go back and set right what once went socially awkward. There's a Groundhog Day -like slickness to sequences in which he tries to escape mortification with a do-over, only to muck things up a second time. With one intimidating summer crush (Margot Robbie) the chance to repeat a moment allows Tim to understand a lesson it might otherwise have taken him years to realize.

Tim's father (Bill Nighy) also has the family's unique gift and advises his son to be careful with how he uses it. Murray Close/Universal Pictures hide caption

Tim's father (Bill Nighy) also has the family's unique gift and advises his son to be careful with how he uses it.

The slow growth of character and relationships is the film's focus more than any complicated plot, but there's complex machinery working in the background to make the time travel coherent — good thing, when multiple characters can up and play around with chronology. But the film takes few of the liberties you'd expect from its genre, and it conforms to an internal logic throughout.

In fact, for all the science-fiction flourishes, life is rendered here with specifics that feel authentic. When Tim meets the bookish Mary (Rachel McAdams), their flirtatious banter feels real; a misspoken word becomes an inside joke, and a common appreciation for Kate Moss becomes a kind of trellis for something to take root and grow on. Tim's learning process is drawn as humanly as possible; the script mines his mistakes (there are plenty) and occasional selfish uses for comedy.

In Love Actually , writer-director Richard Curtis balanced multiple tones — including overt sentimentality and more complicated emotionality. In About Time, he likewise finds a convincing mix. The moment-to-moment experience of Tim's time traveling life feels as grounded as, maybe more so, than many recent romantic comedies. Time passes, Tim matures, his relationship stabilizes, and the film turns its focus to the whole of life, to other facets of love, to how the highs and lows of aging affect his father, his stalwart mother (Lindsay Duncan), and his carefree sister (Lydia Wilson). Time travel may give Tim the unique ability to go back and try to help friends and family when they struggle, but Curtis also explores the limits of the gift, and the inevitability of life's end. The one question left unexplored is whether Tim might share his secret with Mary — an omission that conveniently simplifies their relationship.

That aside, though, this is a film that blends genre pleasures with efficient, thematically resonant storytelling and moreover gives its audience a call to action. About Time is ... about time: It asks us to reflect on how we all use that resource, how the hours and minutes that make up a day or a life align with our intentions and values.

It argues that the simplicity of the mundane is to be prized, that time should be used for reading, running barefoot on the beach, father-son ping-pong matches. It makes the case with a certain poignancy, and it's hard to argue with the result. (Recommended)

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Trivia & Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

Movies / TV

No results found.

• What's the Tomatometer®?
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening this week
• Top box office
• Coming soon to theaters
• Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

• Fandango at Home
• Netflix streaming
• Prime Video
• Most popular streaming movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• Inside Out 2 Link to Inside Out 2
• The Bikeriders Link to The Bikeriders
• Fancy Dance Link to Fancy Dance

New TV Tonight

• The Bear: Season 3
• My Lady Jane: Season 1
• Land of Women: Season 1
• Orphan Black: Echoes: Season 1
• That '90s Show: Season 2
• Savage Beauty: Season 2
• WondLa: Season 1
• Zombies: The Re-Animated Series: Season 1

Most Popular TV on RT

• Star Wars: The Acolyte: Season 1
• The Boys: Season 4
• House of the Dragon: Season 2
• Presumed Innocent: Season 1
• Dark Matter: Season 1
• Eric: Season 1
• Evil: Season 4
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV
• TV & Streaming News

Certified fresh pick

• House of the Dragon: Season 2 Link to House of the Dragon: Season 2
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

Best Movies of 2024: Best New Movies to Watch Now

25 Most Popular TV Shows Right Now: What to Watch on Streaming

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming

What to Expect from The Bear : Season 3

MaXXXine First Reviews: A Gnarly, Potent Satire with a Magnetic Mia Goth at Her Best

• Trending on RT
• 2024's Best Movies
• Most Popular Shows
• July's Anticipated Movies
• Horizon: An American Saga

The Devil All the Time

Where to watch.

Watch The Devil All the Time with a subscription on Netflix.

What to Know

The Devil All the Time 's descent into darkness can be harrowing to the point of punishment, but it's offset by strong work from a stellar cast.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Antonio Campos

Robert Pattinson

Preston Teagardin

Tom Holland

Arvin Russell

Sebastian Stan

Lee Bodecker

Bill Skarsgård

Willard Russell

Harry Melling

Roy Laferty

Movie Clips

More like this, related movie news.

• Entertainment
• <i>The Outfit</i> Is a Pleasing, Wicked Little Thriller Rendered in Tones of Muted Flannel

The Outfit Is a Pleasing, Wicked Little Thriller Rendered in Tones of Muted Flannel

T he pleasures of writer-director Graham Moore’s intimate little crime thriller The Outfit sneak up on you with the same glissando shiver that you feel when you slip on a silk-lined coat. Much of the story unfolds between lines of dialogue, in furtive glances between characters, or in clever feats of magician-like misdirection. The movie’s star, Mark Rylance —as Leonard Burling, a skilled but humble English tailor—is adept at actorly sleight of hand, gradually revealing his character’s secrets in slivers of dry, wicked wit.

Read more reviews by Stephanie Zacharek

It’s 1956 Chicago, where the Savile Row–trained Leonard now runs his own shop, making fine suits for a clientele heavy on high-ranking gangsters. Though Leonard allows his workspace to be used as a sort of message center for the mob, he keeps his head down and his nose clean, focusing mostly on turning out meticulously worked buttonholes, or cutting through swaths of wool with his treasured shears. His loyal receptionist, Mable (Zoey Deutch), a bright young woman who longs to see the world beyond her stifling city, may or may not be having a romance with junior mobster Richie (Dylan O’Brien), the son of big boss Roy (Simon Russell Beale). And wherever Richie goes, his ambitious and hotheaded sidekick Francis ( Johnny Flynn ) goes too, stirring up trouble with every step.

At the center of this clever pinwheel of a story—Moore co-wrote the script with Johnathan McClain—is Rylance, whose economy of motion and emotion is a marvel. As he sits quietly and watchfully sewing a sleeve hem, you believe in every stitch—Rylance shows how Leonard’s confidence in his work ripples through him like electricity, reaching right through his fingertips. At times Rylance’s Leonard has the eyes of an anxious terrier, wary and alert. His gaze softens when Mable is around: she’s a kind of surrogate daughter to him, a jewel worth protecting. Nearly all the action in The Outfit takes place inside Leonard’s shop, a cozy lair shot in muted-flannel tones of gray and gold, but Rylance fills the space with subtle grandeur. Every movement, every breath, is made to measure. How can we ever go back to off-the-rack?

Sign up for More to the Story , TIME’s weekly entertainment newsletter, to get the context you need for the pop culture you love.

More Must-Reads from TIME

• Melinda French Gates Is Going It Alone
• How to Buy Groceries Without Breaking the Bank
• Lai Ching-te Is Standing His Ground
• What’s the Best Pillow Setup for Sleep?
• How Improv Comedy Can Help Resolve Conflicts
• 4 Signs Your Body Needs a Break
• The 15 Best Movies to Watch on a Plane
• Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time

Contact us at [email protected]

‘Time’: A Woman’s Life, A Man’s Imprisonment, A Portrait of Love Everlasting

By K. Austin Collins

K. Austin Collins

There’s a pair of shattering moments at the heart of the 2016 short documentary Alone , directed by Garrett Bradley, that opens the door to the world the filmmaker complicates and expounds upon in her new, feature-length documentary Time . ( Bradley’s latest, which receives a limited theatrical run this week, launches on Amazon Prime Streaming on October 16th.) The first comes when the young woman at its center, Aloné Watts, reveals to her family that she plans to marry Desmond Watson, a man in prison. We have already seen her trying on a wedding dress; we have already heard her say, in a voiceover, “I am beautiful in this dress.” But then Aloné reveals her intentions to her family, and something breaks — loudly. Bradley’s camera rests on the image of Watts’s family home for the extent of the scene. But the sound creates a gap: the voices we hear hit us as if we are inside, at Aloné’s side, when she breaks the news. And what we hear, as loudly and immediately as if they were being hurled in our direction, are screams. A streak of reprimands, heartbreak, and astonished doubt as white-hot as a lightning bolt. All of it born of fear; you can hear it in each voice. Aloné, her family tries to tell her, is going to waste her life. This is not advice. It is, in their eyes, a certainty. 

She later meets with a woman whose voice, though softer, is just as wise and equally certain — this is the next shattering moment. “This system breaks you apart,” the woman tells Aloné. “It is designed, just like slavery, to tear you apart. And instead of using a whip, they use time. They use hardships.” It’s like, she says, “when they used to hang people, but barely hang them, and leave their feet just tip-toeing in the mud. So that they’re constantly on their tip toes, fighting for their lives.”

This woman, a preacher and poet in spirit, if not by trade, is Sibil Fox Richardson, who goes by Fox Rich. It’s Rich’s story that Bradley tells in Time — though “tells” already vastly oversimplifies what Bradley and Rich, together, have accomplished in this remarkable movie. Both Alone and this new  documentary are urgent, lacerating films about black families grappling with the incarceration of loved ones. Both are, more specifically, about the lives of black women, either married to or on the cusp of marrying men who are not free. Women whose sense of their lives, as narrated to us in each film, is that they, too, are not free, and that they will not be so long as the men they love remain incarcerated.

Editor’s picks

Every awful thing trump has promised to do in a second term, the 250 greatest guitarists of all time, the 500 greatest albums of all time, the 50 worst decisions in movie history.

Time would not exist but for a surprising gesture. Bradley had already finished shooting what was to become a short film on Rich when, on the last day of shooting, Rich stopped Bradley to give the filmmaker a box of tapes. Video diaries, more specifically, spanning 18 years and recorded by Rich and occasionally her children on a mini-DV camera. These videos largely record the mundane: the everyday bits of life, especially with growing children, that are most easily taken for granted until they are lost to us. They are letters to Rich’s husband, Robert Richardson. For their nearly two-decade span, Robert is away serving a 60-year prison sentence without parole, for an armed robbery the pair committed (with a nephew) when they were young, newly married, and desperate for money. Rich had been sentenced to 13 years for the crime; she served three and a half. What followed that ordeal — and what Rich’s video diaries painstakingly document — is the life she lived thereon, without her husband, as a single mother caring for the couple’s six children, two of whom were young twins. This is what goes unsaid in Fox’s brief scene in Alone : It’s the history you hear in her voice when she says, “This system breaks you apart.”

With Time, Garrett Bradley has taken a well-chosen and gorgeously organized sample of Rich’s video diaries and wedded them to recent footage, this time filmed by Bradley and a trio of cinematographers. These scenes, which are somehow equally personal, documents Rich’s still-ongoing fight to get her husband parole. He has, by this time, served nearly 18 years. Rich’s goal is to get him home before the 18th birthday of the twins. 

There was a linear throughway available to Bradley here, one that would have told this story in straight chronology, moving from the self-recorded snapshots of Rich and her children enduring the span of Robert’s time in prison to the near-present, when Robert is still in prison and Rich, now a gainfully employed prison abolitionist, is still fighting for his life. Their life. That version of Time would likely be satisfying, too, and perhaps provide more in the way of straight information about, among other things, the case. 

10 Best Movies at Sundance 2020

'dick johnson is dead' review: a tribute to dad, one death at a time.

But this isn’t a true crime documentary. Against the grain of that genre, it redirects our attention from the crime of this couple to the crime of the system. In the first place, there’s an argument to be made — in fact, by giving ample space to Rich’s own confrontation with the question of forgiveness over the years, Time convincingly makes it — for asking fewer questions about what people did to “deserve” imprisonment and more questions about prison’s impact, not only on the people inside, but on the people waiting for them to come home. For this family and many others, incarceration is the absence of a father, a husband. It’s an absence that structures the rest of the family’s life. 

Bradley opts to make us feel that absence — to witness it, reckon with it, be shocked by it. She does this by finding a non-linear order for telling this story, one that still has a broad narrative arc (the fight for Robert’s parole) but which encourages us to abandon ourselves to the flow of Rich’s ideas and emotions. There is no everyday life that is unaffected by her husband’s absence. But he’s always on her mind, even when she cannot see or hear him. Even when we don’t see him in Bradley’s film, he’s on ours. 

Time incites questions and associations and feelings , all hallmarks of thoughtful editing, though rarely is the effect so generative as it is here. The mini-DV transfers of Rich’s diaries are so pointedly clean and sharp that her movie’s own black and white images flow close enough to seamlessly to be even more uncanny than if they’d been all of a piece. She allows things to shock us: the image of the Richardson children as children in one instance, then the sight (and sound) of them as college students the next. How can this, in itself, prove to be so moving? 

What distinguishes this documentary from other movies about mass incarceration is the novelty with which Bradley subverts the mass and trains our eye, frequently literally, on the particular. Films about imprisonment often feature the family, if only because the family is usually easier to access than the people behind bars. But talking to those wives and sons and daughters is one thing. Bradley has not only Rich’s footage to her advantage, but her own incredible perceptiveness to guide her, and a real intelligence for how to let a face tell the story of an entire scene. In this, she’s guided by Rich herself — who is, among other things, an incredible camera presence. (A cut, early on, from Rich in one of her video diaries to her shooting a local commercial proves this point so well, it’s almost jarring.) It feels as if Bradley has gone out of her way to pick up visual cues from her subject’s own video footage — to converse with those diaries, rather than simply complement or contextualize them. Rich’s footage was for her husband. It shows she wanted him to see what he’s missed all these years, from a world outside of a cell to his children’s faces. Intimate details, in other words: lives in loving close-up. 

This is what Bradley matches in her own attentive, careful filmmaking, zeroing in on the family as if she, too, wants to give Robert something to see: his wife. Bradley’s footage — down to the fact that it, like Rich’s, is in black and white, and is limited to the same aspect ratio — somehow avoids the problem of feeling like an intervening gaze from an outsider. But being an outsider has its benefits too, because it affords Bradley her own ideas. The mere organization of this movie, the associations Bradley finds between past and present, “video diary” versus “documentary,” are a case in point; it’s the stitching that gives away the dividing line between these merged projects. But so is the way the filmmaker trains her attention on Rich in moments both grand and mundane. 

There’s a stirring sequence here, for example, that collects a series of speeches Rich has given over the years about her experience with the prison system; you’re right to feel, here, as if the movie is rooting for her to win. But the ideas are in the editing, too. The movie makes a point of including the moment that Rich announces the date in each of her diaries, which confer less a sense of time passing than of, more interestingly, her commitment to marking time. She is counting the days. We even see her describe her life this way: that year-long cycle of legal appointments, deadlines, and holidays that structure her fight for Robert’s parole. Which is to say, her life. 

Obviously, the film’s name is not arbitrary. But part of the power of Time is in the range of meanings it manages to generate, in an attentive viewer’s mind, over the course of its runtime. The title verges on ironic. Time, by definition, is progress: It hurtles only forward, with no off-ramps or exits, no alternatives, no take-backs. It is only appropriate for Bradley to treat this definition like a rule worth breaking. Because time’s role in our lives is, ultimately, something like a seventh sense. It is that fundamental to our perspective of the shape and span of our lives, so much so that we can’t help but claim, in our language, that it’s ours. We say it can be given, stolen, borrowed, managed, wasted. Bradley’s portrait is a blistering and compassionate reminder that for the incarcerated and their loved ones, time is not something you have, but something you do. It isn’t progress. It’s punishment. To “do time” is to lose it. 

It’s essential, then, that Bradley’s documentary attends so carefully to our sensations as we watch, swelling and swerving its way through this family’s long haul of an emotional ordeal. It’s vital, and also sort of impossible, that the movie climaxes and closes on the most startlingly intimate of notes. I’ll leave the raw details to the movie to reveal. But you can’t miss it. There’s a brief moment, in a car — the suggestion of an incident — which, among other things, reveals the level of trust and compassion flowing between the director and the Richardson family, and gets to the root of what it means to let an artist into one’s life, to say nothing of how it feels to see a life restored. 

Bradley’s own sleight of hand comes soon after, and it is all the more extraordinary for being so simple. She finds a way to recast what came before, building toward a final image that is deeply, knowingly bittersweet. Time, Bradley asks us to remember, is what we lose. Only in a movie can we entertain and engineer the fantasy of getting it back, rewinding the clock, restoring presence to a loved one’s absence. Thank God, then, for movies. This one especially.

'The Bear' Season 3 Is Everything You've Been Waiting For and (Maybe Too Much) More

• By Alan Sepinwall

FKA Twigs Rejects Shia LaBeouf's Request for Private Records Ahead of Abuse Lawsuit

• By Charisma Madarang

'The Bear' Is Back: Here's How to Watch Season Three Online

• Streaming Guide
• By Sage Anderson and John Lonsdale

Bill Cobbs, Prolific Character Actor in 'The Bodyguard,' 'Night at the Museum,' Dead at 90

• By Jon Blistein

'Daddio' Asks the Question: What If 'Taxi Driver' Was a Gender Studies Course?

• MOVIE REVIEW
• By David Fear

Most Popular

Sean penn says he 'went 15 years miserable on sets' after 'milk' and could not play gay role today due to a 'timid and artless policy toward the human imagination', donald sutherland, versatile star of 'm*a*s*h,' 'ordinary people' and 'the hunger games,' dies at 88, kylie kelce’s heartwarming photo of her 3 daughters has fans calling one girl a ‘travis twin’, german artist receives death threats after center-right politicians denounce work about children, you might also like, thai film ‘how to make millions before grandma dies’ reaches $27 million in southeast asia rollout – global bulletin, diptyque makes top executive changes, the best yoga mats for any practice, according to instructors, ‘janet planet’ star julianne nicholson notes others think she’s ‘underused, underappreciated, overlooked’, nba draft 2024: rookie contracts for every first-round pick.

Rolling Stone is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2024 Rolling Stone, LLC. All rights reserved.

Verify it's you

Please log in.

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Time review – poetic documentary about a family torn apart by prison

Garrett Bradley uses home movies and a lyrical style to tell the story of watching a loved one locked away

T he idea that the mass incarceration of African Americans is in effect a modern form of slavery has been explored in several powerful documentaries, ranging from Sam Pollard’s 2012 Slavery by Another Name (from Douglas A Blackmon’s book) to Ava DuVernay’s Oscar-nominated 13 th (2016). But while others have tended to concentrate on statistics, history and politics, director Garrett Bradley goes the other way in her film Time, conjuring an almost expressionist account of the experiences of a family torn apart by prison, examining the toll that jail time takes on those outside the prison walls.

Despite headlines at the time, there was little Bonnie and Clyde glamour to the bank robbery that landed Fox Rich (AKA Sibil Fox Richardson) and her husband, Robert, in prison in the late 90s. Both accepted responsibility for the crime, an out-of-character reaction to the collapse of a business on which they had pinned all their hopes. Yet while Fox took a plea deal and served three-and-a-half years, Robert fell foul of terrible legal advice and wound up sentenced to 60 years without parole.

Such legal details, however, are not the focus of this extraordinarily intimate portrait of the Rich family, in which Bradley, who won the directing award in the US documentary category at Sundance, moves back and forth through two decades of separation, drawing on an extensive archive of home-movie footage that Fox created to show Robert the life he was missing inside, and that was waiting for him when he got out, something she never doubted would happen.

Through these videos, which are beautifully interwoven by editor Gabriel Rhodes with more recent footage (all rendered in strangely cinematic black and white), we watch young twins Freedom and Justus grow from boys to men, inspired by their mother, who somehow juggled raising six sons with becoming a businesswoman, an activist and a powerful advocate for prison reform.

Eschewing explanatory title cards or on-screen text, Bradley creates a tone poem that ebbs and flows in hypnotically lyrical style, dexterously shuffling images from disparate periods to create something unified and immersive. Through this time-shifting montage, we are encouraged to share in the experiences of the indomitable woman whom Bradley met while making the 2017 New York Times Op-Docs episode Alone , a stylistically similar short film she considers the “sister” to this feature. “This system breaks you apart,” Fox says in Alone . “It is designed, just like slavery, to tear you apart.” Yet in Time it’s an almost superhuman sense of togetherness that rings through, a refusal to bow down, to be broken or defeated.

For all its urgent verisimilitude, there are moments when Bradley’s documentary seems closer to a drama, not least in a scene of remarkable backseat intimacy, sensitively shot in slow-mo by Nisa East, one of three credited cinematographers. There’s even a self-reflexive sequence of Fox taping a promo for her car dealership that teases away at the boundaries of performance and personality. But such playfulness never obscures the truth of Bradley’s vision or the honesty with which Rich confronts her own circumstances.

Worth noting too is the superb use of piano music by Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, the subject of Kate Molleson’s 2017 BBC Radio 4 doc The Honky Tonk Nun , which ripples with bluesy ease throughout the movie, combining the same air of soulfulness and spirituality that lies at the heart of Bradley’s film.

Time is in selected cinemas now and on Amazon Prime

• Documentary films
• Mark Kermode's film of the week

Most viewed

• Become a Critical Movie Critic
• Movie Review Archives

Movie Review: Time (2020)

• Howard Schumann
• Movie Reviews
• No responses
• --> February 7, 2021

“The time is out of joint. O cursèd spite, That ever I was born to set it right!” — William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5

According to the United States Sentencing Commission, the incarceration rate for blacks in the U.S. is over five times higher than whites. In addition, Black male offenders receive sentences that are on average 19.1 percent longer than whites. In Georgia and Louisiana, the proportion of Blacks serving life sentences without possibility of parole is as high as 73.9 and 73.3 percent, respectively. While these statistics tell a story of racial inequality, what they do not reveal is the human cost on families left behind. Winner of the Sundance Award for Best Director, Garrett Bradley’s (“Cover Me”) stunning documentary, Time , shows the human cost on a Black family in Louisiana coping with the absence of husband and father of six boys, Robert Richardson, sentenced to 60-years in prison for the attempted robbery of a credit union.

Using home videos and archival footage edited by Gabriel Rhodes (“And We Go Green”), the film takes place over a period of 20 years and, as one boy declares, “time is loss . . . time flies.” Describing the film’s title, Bradley says that “Time is abstract. The word itself can elicit many meanings, symbols, and practicalities.” The passage of time in the film, however, as shown in the videos compiled by wife and mother, Sybil Fox Richardson — known as Fox Rich, reflects the boys’ growth from childhood to young adults, an entire life without having ever known what it means to have a father.

Left with empty spaces and a cardboard cutout of their father hanging on the wall, their house is filled with a constant reminder of the missing piece, the empty chair at the table and the space in the passenger’s seat in the family car. The absence of the father, however, did not quell the family’s optimism or their determination to have Robert released from his draconian prison sentence. Even more importantly, it did not diminish the love they felt for each other. As an accomplice, Sybil served only three and one half years as a result of a plea bargain. Although a similar deal was offered to Robert, it was withdrawn and the maximum sentence was imposed, even though it was his first offense and there was no violence involved.

The film, shot in black and white by cinematographers Zac Manuel (“Buckjumping”), Justin Zweifach (“Trial by Media”) and Nisa East (“Holy Denver”), is basically Fox’s story and her growth from a self-doubting and insecure young woman to an eloquent advocate for criminal justice reform. In her 2009 memoir, “The One That Got Away: A True Story of Personal Transformation,” she relates her move to New Orleans to be closer to Robert and her campaigning for prison reform in schools, churches, and community gatherings. We also follow her business career as an owner of a car dealership in New Orleans as well as being a motivational speaker.

Employing a non-linear narrative with numerous flashbacks, Time depicts scenes of childhood in kindergarten where the twins (Freedom and Justus) talk about Freedom’s “student of the month” award, the celebration of birthdays, a visit to an amusement park, and the boys’ development into college students pursuing a professional career. Unlike typical stereotypical images of young black males, the boys are shown as complex human beings with a unique ability to set reachable goals for themselves and articulate their feelings. Set to the poetic score of now 96-year-old Ethiopian nun and pianist Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, the viewer is immersed in the family’s struggle.

According to Bradley, “I wanted the film to feel like a river, and not like a collage, and the music helped reinforce that idea and intention. Describing Guèbrou’s music, Bradley s says “I like how open-ended time can be. Emahoy’s music is radically pointed. She frames her own sense of time; she molds it to her liking.” Though Fox maintains her composure throughout, there is a sense of determination about her, a certainty that she will not quit until she can greet her husband walking out of prison. Her fight is one to make sure the family stays together, even after twenty years of frustration. Some of the footage depicts Fox’s numerous phone calls to the judge’s assistant seeking information which is usually not available.

Fox’s tone is one of restraint and courtesy, yet it is clear that she hides her frustration about the unresponsiveness and insensitivity of the justice system. She is a fighter, however. As Bradley describes it, “I loved the spiritual connection of what it means to be a strong Black woman and to work within and outside of the constraints and parameters that the world gives you. To find yourself and remain an individual and to ensure that there’s nuance in your life within those realities.” Time is not a film only about prison reform but also about the enduring bonds of love, one that grew in strength over the years. As Nobel Prize-winning poet Derek Walcott expressed it, “Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole.”

Tagged: African Americans , children , court , mother , prison , true story

I am a retired father of two living with my wife in Vancouver, B.C. who has had a lifelong interest in the arts.

Movie Review: Hit the Road (2021) Movie Review: Happening (2021) Movie Review: Playground (2021) Movie Review: The Power of the Dog (2021) Movie Review: After Yang (2021) Movie Review: The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) Movie Review: The Worst Person in the World (2021)

'Movie Review: Time (2020)' has no comments

Privacy Policy | About Us

 |  Log in

‘The Exorcism’ Review: Russell Crowe Plays a Fallen Movie Star Playing a Priest in an Exorcist Movie. Is This the Sign of a Career Gone to Hell?

Crowe stars in his second exorcist film in a year. His acting isn't bad, but by the end the message seems to be: The power of residuals compels you.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

• ‘Maxxxine’ Review: Mia Goth Fights the Hollywood Power in Ti West’s Retro- ’80s Schlock Sex-and-Horror Thriller. It’s Fun at Times, but It’s No ‘Pearl’ 20 hours ago
• Remembering Donald Sutherland: From Cool in ‘MASH’ to Sexy in ‘Don’t Look Now’ to Tragic in ‘Ordinary People,’ He Was a Chameleon, and the Most Human of Movie Stars 6 days ago
• ‘The Exorcism’ Review: Russell Crowe Plays a Fallen Movie Star Playing a Priest in an Exorcist Movie. Is This the Sign of a Career Gone to Hell? 7 days ago

Related Stories

Survey data: do consumers want gen ai in entertainment content, ‘the bachelor’ producers acknowledge racism in the franchise, say they 'did not protect' first black bachelor matt james, popular on variety.

While we’re on the subject of art-and-life parallels, this is the second exorcist film that Russell Crowe has made in a little over a year (the first, “The Pope’s Exorcist,” was released in April 2023), and that might well be the sign of a once-hot movie star’s fall from grace. But Crowe remains too good an actor to phone in what he’s doing, and his performance as Tony has an undercurrent of shaggy despair unusual for the genre.

Early on, Tony’s 16-year-old daughter, Lee (Ryan Simpkins), returns to his funky New York loft apartment after she gets kicked out of Catholic boarding school. For a while, we’re invested in whether Tony can mend fences with her, and whether he can turn his broken life around by portraying the priest in a movie whose director, played with amusing Machiavellian ruthlessness by Adam Goldberg, will do whatever it takes to wring a good performance out of his leading man, even it means abusing the hell out of him. (In this case that’s no metaphor.) “You still devout?” asks Goldberg’s Peter, saying it like it’s a dirty word. Tony is a former altar boy, so I guess that’s supposed to hit him hard.

On set, Lee bonds with Tony’s pop-musician costar, Blake (Chloe Bailey), the lead singer of Vampire Sorority. And Tony is coached by an on-set priest, Father Conor, a kind of intimacy-with-the-almighty coordinator played with amiable cynicism by David Hyde Pierce. There are omens, like Tony’s bloody nose on the first day of shooting. The bottom line is that Tony is not giving a good performance, and what’s standing in his way is his guilt for his sins, as well as the “mysterious” trauma that brought on his bad behavior. This is a movie that plays connect-the-dots with exorcist/Catholic/addict themes.

“The Exorcism” was directed by Joshua John Miller, who’s the son of Jason Miller, the late costar of “The Exorcist,” which creates, I guess, a kind of Satanic synergy. As the movie goes on, Tony starts slugging whiskey again, which on the story’s terms is a sign that the devil has appeared. The trouble is that a good exorcist movie requires a confrontation with the devil. Crowe is playing an actor playing an exorcist, and the way “The Exorcism” is structured what he needs to be is the therapeutic Father Merrin of his own soul. But the darker the movie gets, the less there is at stake, and the more that Crowe seems to be going through the motions of trying to save not his soul but his career. The power of residuals compels you.

Reviewed at Digital Arts, New York, June 13, 2024. MPA Rating: R. Running time: 93 MIN.

• Production: A Vertical Entertainment release of a Miramax, Outerbanks Entertainment production. Producers: Kevin Williamson, Ben Fast, Bill Block. Executive producers: Padraic McKinley, Scott Putman, Andrew Golov, Thomas Zadra.
• Crew: Director: Joshua John Miller. Screenplay: M.A. Fortin, Joshua John Miller. Camera: Simon Duggan. Editor: Matthew Woolley. Music: Daniel Bensi, Saunder Jurriaans.
• With: Russell Crowe, Ryan Simpjkins, Sam Worthington, Chloe Bailey, Adam Goldberg, David Hyde Pierce.

More from Variety

Jeffrey wright joins michael fassbender in political thriller series ‘the agency’ at showtime, regulators shouldn’t blow the whistle on venu sports just yet, sheryl crow slams drake for using ai to recreate tupac’s voice on his kendrick lamar diss track: ‘it’s hateful’ and ‘antithetical’ to life, comedy central’s website purges 25 years of video clips and other content, ame institute to host “state of the creative industries” panel, sponsored by variety vip+, marvel’s ‘fantastic four’ is a 1960s period piece in new york city, confirms kevin feige — but it’s probably not the nyc from our world, more from our brands, childish gambino sets july 2 release for single ‘lithonia,’ calls rap beef ‘fun’, onerepublic’s zach filkins lists revamped colonial home in illinois for $3.75 million, nba draft 2024: rookie contracts for every first-round pick, the best loofahs and body scrubbers, according to dermatologists, jared padalecki reflects on his 24-year tv run (‘i’m pretty tired’) and what’s not next after walker ends, verify it's you, please log in.

Movie Review: Time slows to a crawl in “The Time Capsule”

A politician on the rebound after a failed campaign gets to ponder what might have been when his high school girlfriend returns from a 20 year space journey in “The Time Capsule.” It’s a downbeat, wistful and entirely-too-quiet romantic drama that could use a little more romance and a lot more drama in a story that downplays the science fiction, and most everything else.

It’s about young love interrupted, put on pause and revisited thanks to “time dilation.”

“Desperate Housewives” and “With Love” alumnus Todd Grinell plays a Senate candidate whose campaign imploded in an unguarded, profane blast of public enthusiasm for schools in front of school kids. Now he and his ambitious-enough-for-them-both wife ( KaDee Strickland of TV’s “Shut Eye” and “Private Practice”) are headed to his family’s old lake house down South.

Our first tip that this is “somewhere else in time” is at the rental car agency. “Self-driving” is an option. Cell phones have holographic projectors. And that “old” lake house is a modernist McMansion, “modern” by 1970s standards.

Former Congressman Jack barely has time to reminisce over a digital photo album of his high school girlfriend when BOOM — there she is in the supermarket. Elise ( Brianna Hildebrand of “Deadpool”) still looks 18. She took a trip far away “to the colony.” She came back. Cryo-sleep was involved.

Now Jack’s 40 and Elise is, well a bit mature for her age but still a kid.

“Who cares that you look like some creepy old dude” in her presence, his old pal ( Baron Vaughn ) blurts, in a tipsy moment? Well, he does, and we dare say his hard-driving have-a-baby-it’ll-help-the-next-campaign wife.

And we as viewers do, as well. Which makes the very premise of “The Time Capsule” more icky than romantic or nostalgic.

The “big ideas” wrestled with here are the stuff of many a high school reunion dramedy. “Most people don’t get to see how everybody turned out” before they themselves “turn out,” wife-Maggie notes.

Elise “can’t relate to people I used to know because they all think I’m just a child.”

And Jack, when he isn’t mooning over Elise or indulging her and his arrested-development pal Patrice (Vaughn) by hitting their old night club (Elise gets carded), can’t help but act a little fatherly and sage to the teenager on his arm.

“As you get older, disappointments add up.”

Icky moments aside — and cast and crew work hard to avoid them– nothing that’s wrestled with here wouldn’t have fit in a “Twilight Zone” episode — the 30 minute version.

There’s little chemistry between the leads, the dialogue has a drab, lifeless Lifetime Original Movie quality and the sci-fi elements are limited to mundane layman’s-eye-view takes on space travel and a dash of the technology that’s replaced fireworks — “artificial meteor showers.”

The political stuff, in which Jack questions his commitment and the phoniness of his image because Elise reminds him of his more outspoken, passionate youth, is mildly interesting at most.

It all adds up to a blasé sci-fi variation of “If I knew then what I know now,” so blasé that it dares to trot out that moth-eaten old expression in an attempt at third act profundity.

Rating: unrated, profanity, alcohol and cannabis abuse.

Cast: Todd Grinell, Brianna Hildebrand, KaDee Strickland, Baron Vaughn, Nelson Padilla and Ravi Patel

Credits: Directed by Erwann Marshall, scripted by Erwann Marshall, Chad Fifer. A FilmRise release.

Running time: 1:43

Share this:

About Roger Moore

Top posts & pages.

• Movie Review: Tom Sizemore suffers through the Cinematically Interminable -- "Impuratus"
• Movie Review: Dakota and Sean share Cab Ride Confessions -- "Daddio"
• Movie Review: "It's Not Over," no matter much you wish it was
• Movie Review: An ex-con, a sailor lass and a killer face their fates outside the "Breakwater"
• Movie Review: "Cora Bora" sings her way from Portlandia to LA
• Documentary Review: "Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on 'The Exorcist'"
• Classic Film Review: "Leon: The Professional" (1994), as Twisted as You Remember It
• Movie Preview: Proselytizers, meet Hugh Grant, "Heretic"
• Movie Review: Kevin Hart Stops Trying -- "Die Hart: Die Harter"
• Movie Review: One "last" COVID Lockdown Rom-com? "Footnotes"

Find a Movie Review

Like Movie Nation on Facebook

Recent Reviews/Stories

• Movie Review: “Cora Bora” sings her way from Portlandia to LA
• Movie Preview: Proselytizers, meet Hugh Grant, “Heretic”
• Movie Review: Dakota and Sean share Cab Ride Confessions — “Daddio”
• Movie Preview: Schwartzman and Kane deliver Jewish giggles right “Between the Temples”
• Movie Review: Argentine Catholic lives her version of “Chronicles of a Wandering Saint”
• February 2024
• January 2024
• December 2023
• November 2023
• October 2023
• September 2023
• August 2023
• February 2023
• January 2023
• December 2022
• November 2022
• October 2022
• September 2022
• August 2022
• February 2022
• January 2022
• December 2021
• November 2021
• October 2021
• September 2021
• August 2021
• February 2021
• January 2021
• December 2020
• November 2020
• October 2020
• September 2020
• August 2020
• February 2020
• January 2020
• December 2019
• November 2019
• October 2019
• September 2019
• August 2019
• February 2019
• January 2019
• December 2018
• November 2018
• October 2018
• September 2018
• August 2018
• February 2018
• January 2018
• December 2017
• November 2017
• October 2017
• September 2017
• August 2017
• February 2017
• January 2017
• December 2016
• November 2016
• October 2016
• September 2016
• August 2016
• February 2016
• January 2016
• December 2015
• November 2015
• October 2015
• September 2015
• August 2015
• February 2015
• January 2015
• December 2014
• November 2014
• October 2014
• September 2014
• August 2014
• February 2014
• January 2014
• December 2013
• November 2013
• October 2013
• September 2013
• August 2013
• February 2013
• January 2013
• December 2012
• November 2012
• October 2012
• September 2012
• August 2012
• February 2012
• January 2012
• December 2011
• observer.com/2024/04/jess…
• akismet.com/privacy
• imdb.com/title/tt0032484/…
• twitter.com/EW/status/114…
• t.co/xr2tb1gmzO
• imdb.com/title/tt0100263/…
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ach…
• imdb.com/title/tt0929425/…
• variety.com/2013/film/new…
• Deadline.com
• Internet Movie Car Database
• Internet Movie Database
• The Hollywood Reporter

Follow Movie Nation by email

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Email Address:

Blogs I Follow

• Movie Nation
• Mann-ing Up
• Action/Adventure Film & Screenplay Festival
• Reel Time Flicks
• From the Fourth Row!
• keithandthemovies.wordpress.com/
• Los Angeles feedback film festival
• LOWLIFE MAGAZINE
• The Watcher Blog

RSS Feeds — subscribe, or else

• RSS - Posts
• RSS - Comments

Tweets and more tweets

• Max Von Sydow

Roger Moore's film criticism, against the grain since 1984.

Living in a Mann’s World

Get your short film showcased at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Get your screenplay showcased at the Writing Festival.

Film reviews, news, previews and general insane ramblings of a film enthusiast!

Movies, Reviews,Trailers,Interviews and News

A monthly event... LAFeedbackFilmFestival.com

"Find what you love and let it kill you." – Charles Bukowski

Keeping an eye on all the latest mainstream films and television.

• Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
• Subscribe Subscribed
• Copy shortlink
• Report this content
• View post in Reader
• Manage subscriptions
• Collapse this bar

to submit an obituary

Please email [email protected] or call 530-896-7718. Please include your name, mailing address, and phone number along with the copy and photo.

Movie Review | Crowe stars in horror flick…

Share this:.

• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to print (Opens in new window)
• Sponsored Content

Things To Do

Movie review | crowe stars in horror flick that’s only so possessing.

Then there’s the appealing horror movie-within-a-horror movie structure, the flick built around an exorcism movie with, yes, a possessed girl and a haunted priest.

And, finally, there’s the fact that its director and co-writer, John Miller, is the son of Jason Miller, who portrayed the ill-fated Father Karras in “The Exorcist,” and who told a story about a priest stopping him on the street while the movie was being made and saying, “When we dare to unmask the devil, the devil retaliates.”

All of it is much more interesting than “The Exorcism” itself, which, like so many horror endeavors that have come before it devolves from a promising start to too silly to be scared by or even taken vaguely seriously.

Co-penned by John Miller’s life partner, M.A. Fortin, the two having previously collaborated on the screenplay for the reasonably well-received 2015 comedy slasher “The Final Girls,” “The Exorcism” does hold your interest for a while.

It opens with a fairly well-executed sequence in which the actor who will play the priest in the fictitious movie works on his movements through a three-tiered house set constructed on a soundstage while reading his lines. That is until he’s killed, quickly but gruesomely.

Next, “The Exorcism” benefits from the presence of its star, Russell Crowe. Once the star of blockbusters and acclaimed films, such as 1999’s “The Insider” and 2000s “Gladiator,” the New Zealand-born, Australian-raised actor more recently has been front and center of less memorable fare such as “Unhinged” and, well, “The Pope’s Exorcist.” And yet he still has this undeniable gravitational pull when he’s within the frame.

Instead of portraying a priest, as he did in last year’s “The Pope’s Exorcist,” he’s an actor portraying a priest (what range!) in this movie-in-a-movie affair.

Crowe’s Tony Miller only snagged the gig after the other actor’s death, this being the former’s first meaningful gig after years of public, alcohol-fueled embarrassments. He now wonders if his late wife’s battle with cancer was really the excuse for this self-destructive behavior he once thought it was.

“Her being sick gave me a reason to just disconnect,” he tells an unseen priest during a Catholic confession.

Before filming begins, his attitude-filled 16-year-old daughter, Lee (Ryan Simpkins, “Sherrybaby”) — who calls him “Tony,” which he doesn’t love — returns home, her father having pulled strings to get her school expulsion reduced to a suspension.

Soon, they’re both on set, Lee working as a production assistant and Tony immediately disappointing the film’s high-minded director, Peter (Adam Goldberg), who believes he’s making a psychological drama disguised as a horror flick. Peter has no reservations about trying to pull a better performance from Tony by reminding him of his recent failures as a person, as well as his traumatic time years earlier as an altar boy.

Tony begins to unravel, but, of course, there may be something darker than subpar acting afoot.

That’s all well and fine, and, for a while, “The Exorcism” is intermittently — if also only mildly — scary as Tony takes his work and demons home with Lee. Before long, though, this roughly 90-minute offering is going predictably over-the-top, with an unmistakably otherworldly on-set incident involving Tony somehow not shutting down the production.

Like the movie-within-the-movie, “The Exorcism” trudges on, with supporting players who include wonderful-to-see “Frasier” alum David Hyde Pierce, playing a priest with a degree in psychology consulting on the production; “Avatar” franchise star (and fellow Aussie) Sam Worthington, as an actor who looks up to Tony and also is playing a priest; and singer-songwriter Chloe Bailey, as an actress who portrays the young woman who becomes possessed in the film and who becomes romantically entangled with Lee.

(It seems possible the film being made in “The Exorcism” is a remake of “The Exorcist,” which, in reality, saw the reboot effort “The Exorcist: Believer” be poorly received last year by audience members and critics alike. Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter.)

If the meta aspects of “The Exorcism” bring to mind the ongoing “Scream” movie franchise, it won’t come as a shock to learn its creator, Kevin Williamson, is counted among its producers.

In their filmmakers’ statement, MIller and Fortin say they began writing the film in 2019, when, during the presidency of Donald J. Trump, they watched “certain segments of the Christian faith go after LGBT folks” and “there wasn’t much that didn’t feel cursed anymore.”

Some of that emotion does come through in “The Exorcism,” which is commendable. However, it doesn’t change the fact that at best this is a quick-and-easy popcorn movie when — given its inspiration, structure and connection to “The Exorcist” — it could have been something more.

“The Exorcism” is rated R for language, some violent content, sexual references and brief drug use. Runtime: 1 hour, 33 minutes.

More in Things To Do

‘Bigfoot Daze’ set in Willow Creek

SUBSCRIBER ONLY

Helping new teachers.

Sense and Sensitivity | Son frustrated by academic struggles

Short Play Festival

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Kalki 2898 AD

A modern-day avatar of Vishnu, a Hindu god, who is believed to have descended to earth to protect the world from evil forces. A modern-day avatar of Vishnu, a Hindu god, who is believed to have descended to earth to protect the world from evil forces. A modern-day avatar of Vishnu, a Hindu god, who is believed to have descended to earth to protect the world from evil forces.

• Amitabh Bachchan
• Kamal Haasan
• 42 User reviews
• 9 Critic reviews

Top cast 23

• Ashwatthama

• Supreme Yaskin

• Commander Manas

• Rajan - Bhairava's Landlord

• Counsellor Bani

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

More like this

Did you know

• Trivia Amitabh Bachchan and Kamal Hassan to work together after 39 years since Geraftaar (1985).
• Soundtracks Bhairava Anthem (Telugu) Music by Santhosh Narayanan Lyrics by Ramjogayya Sastry Vocals by Deepak Blue & Diljit Dosanjh

User reviews 42

• Jun 26, 2024
• When was Kalki 2898 AD released? Powered by Alexa
• June 27, 2024 (United States)
• Kalki 2898-AD
• Ramoji Film City, Hyderabad, Telangana, India
• Vyjayanthi Movies
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• ₹6,000,000,000 (estimated)

Technical specs

• Runtime 3 hours
• IMAX 6-Track
• Dolby Atmos
• Dolby Digital

Related news

Contribute to this page.

• See more gaps
• Learn more about contributing

More to explore

Recently viewed.

Advertisement

Supported by

Review: In ‘June Zero,’ There Are Many Ways to See the Past

Jake Paltrow’s film braids three fictional stories around the 1962 execution of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official and war criminal.

• Share full article

By Nicolas Rapold

In 1960, Israeli agents smuggled the Nazi official Adolf Eichmann from Buenos Aires to Jerusalem to stand trial for his role in the Holocaust. Rather than focus on the operation, or on Eichmann’s notorious defense , “June Zero” thoughtfully braids three stories that relate to the events around Eichmann’s execution by hanging in 1962.

Jake Paltrow’s film, which premiered at festivals in 2022, might sound like an exercise in hagiography: Drawing on actual accounts, it’s framed by the tale of David, a plucky Israeli teenager who finds himself involved in Eichmann’s fate. But the shifting story, written by Paltrow and Tom Shoval, complicates the act of commemoration and dwells on the moral quandaries and uncomfortable resonances that result from the events.

David (Noam Ovadia, a nervy newcomer) is pushed to work in a factory after trouble in school. His boss, Shlomi (Tzahi Grad), a brutal former soldier, is secretly custom-building an oven for the government to cremate Eichmann’s remains, and their plan is played in the movie for unease as much as for suspense.

At the same time, Eichmann’s guard in jail, Haim (Yoav Levi), nearly goes mad from his assignment to protect the Nazi. The spotlight then leaps to Poland, where a tour guide (Tom Hagi), a Holocaust survivor, spars with the trip organizer (Joy Rieger), weighing the necessary rituals of remembrance against the risks of being trapped by the past.

Concluding with David’s role in Eichmann’s disposal, “June Zero” sticks to its characters’ specific experiences of these events. But the resourceful narrative, with some surprising grace notes, tends to invite questioning and reflection.

June Zero Not rated. In Hebrew and Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters.

Review: ‘Horizon,’ Costner’s western, is drab, overindulged tedium. Ready for 7 more hours of it?

• Copy Link URL Copied!

Kevin Costner’s new western epic “Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1” is the kind of film that begs the question: How did this get made? But we already know, because part of the film’s lore is that producer-director-star-co-writer Costner staked the funding himself, at great personal risk.

In order to devote himself to the planned four-part “Horizon: An American Saga,” the “Dances With Wolves” Oscar winner walked away from the blockbuster television series “Yellowstone” and put up his own property to self-fund this Civil War-era yarn, demonstrating a kind of dogged, single-minded commitment and determination akin to the pioneers of the Old West. Much like Francis Ford Coppola’s self-funded “Megalopolis,” which also premiered at last month’s Cannes Film Festival alongside “Horizon,” it is an admirable yet delusional dedication to the cause of deeply personal cinema.

But what unfolds on screen over the course of three hours and one minute in “Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1” can only be described as a massive boondoggle, a misguided and excruciatingly tedious cinematic experience. That Costner has promised three more installments feels like a threat.

Kevin Costner’s ‘Horizon: An American Saga’ should have been a TV show

“Chapter 1,” which premiered Sunday at Cannes, has all the hallmarks of TV. Times staffers debate whether that’s a good or bad thing.

May 20, 2024

“They don’t make them like this anymore” is usually a compliment. With “Horizon,” it’s a condemnation. They don’t make them like this anymore because we’ve evolved past this kind of broad, cheesy western melodrama (with questionable racial and sexual politics). They don’t make them like this anymore because Martin Scorsese carefully dismantled that kind of reductive western storytelling in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” delivering the eulogy himself.

There is a distinctly retro feel to this project — and not in a classic, old-fashioned way, but rather, in a dated, out-of-touch way, in the plotting and the style. It looks and sounds like a 1990s television miniseries, photographed with flat, bright compositions and scored to a syrupy, sentimental and emotionally oppressive score by John Debney.

Co-written with Jon Baird and Mark Kasdan, the script weaves together several disparate storylines set largely in 1863. By the end, we’ll come to understand that all roads lead to Horizon, a patch of cursed land that’s been heavily advertised to pioneers even though the Apache tribe has kept the land clear of anything other than the grave markers of white settlers for years.

In an early action sequence, Apache warriors attack a dance in the Horizon tent city, a scene that plays like a right-wing fever dream, where guns are salvation against the faceless Indigenous other. Costner does later take us into the Apache tribe, where an elder leader warns the young warriors that the settlers will keep coming, and we do eventually witness retaliatory white violence on the Apache. Perhaps we’ll see more nuanced depictions of Native American life in future installments, but for now, the representations are problematically generalized and seemingly perfunctory.

In the wake of this attack, the widowed Mrs. Kittredge ( Sienna Miller ) and her daughter Lizzie (Georgia MacPhail) are taken to the closest Army camp by Union soldiers, where the two women discover growing affection for their saviors, including Trent Gephart (Sam Worthington).

Elsewhere, the Sykes brothers from a Montana Territory family seek revenge on a young woman, Ellen (Jena Malone), who shot their father and ran away with their son. She’s settled in a tiny village in Wyoming Territory with an enterprising sex worker, Marigold (Abbey Lee), but can’t outrun her past. Marigold seduces horse trader Hayes Ellison (Costner) but the two have to go on the lam after a run-in with one of the evil Sykes brothers (Jamie Campbell Bower). Meanwhile, a contentious wagon train, led by Matthew Van Weyden (Luke Wilson), makes its way toward Horizon, battling the elements, and there’s also a band of Apache hunters hoping to turn Native scalps into commerce.

All of these storylines are cut together haphazardly and unevenly. There are random time jumps, and the scenes go on for too long or otherwise reveal themselves to be pointless. Instead of one narrative arc deeply explored, we’re stuck hopping between several, never caring or understanding much about anyone beyond the surface level.

There are so many speaking roles that we can’t possibly appreciate them, beyond extremely basic “black hat/white hat” understandings of Western archetypes, which ultimately render every character (aside from Costner’s) insultingly cartoonish. Big performances lend to the melodramatic tone that makes “Horizon” feel profoundly silly. Costner, stoic, reminds us of his powerful screen presence, but swirling around his character is an unfortunate circus of stereotypes.

“Horizon” is the kind of auteur project that makes one long for the idea of studio notes, for anyone to push back on Costner’s worst instincts. Unfortunately, he proves to be the judge, jury and executioner of his own passion project.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

'Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1'

Rating: R, for violence, some nudity and sexuality Running time: 3 hours, 1 minute Playing: In wide release Friday, June 28

More to Read

Review: Native women are at the heart of the haunted ‘Fancy Dance’ — and also its victims

June 21, 2024

Kevin Costner’s ‘Yellowstone’ ride is officially over. Take it from John Dutton himself

Kevin Costner’s son doesn’t have ‘a lot’ of acting cred. Why he’s in ‘Horizon’ anyway

June 18, 2024

Only good movies

Get the Indie Focus newsletter, Mark Olsen's weekly guide to the world of cinema.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

More From the Los Angeles Times

Bill Cobbs, character actor known for ‘Air Bud’ and ‘The Bodyguard,’ dies at 90

June 26, 2024

She made an honest movie about Poland’s migrant crisis. That’s when her problems began

‘A Family Affair’ is a rom-com ‘dream scenario’ for Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron and Joey King

Entertainment & Arts

What to know about Tamayo Perry, the actor and surfer who died in apparent shark attack

June 25, 2024

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, black writers week, the time being.

Now streaming on:

Movies use artistic professions as a sort of psychological shorthand. If a character is an actor, he or she is usually neurotic, potentially self-absorbed and probably an alcoholic. Writer characters are always neurotic, preternaturally self-loathing and definitely alcoholics. Musicians are oversexed dopeheads. They’ve got nothing on cinematic painters, who have it worst of all. Not only are they tortured by whatever inner demon speaks through their brushstrokes, they are tormented by the fact that the general public fails to grasp the meanings of their artwork. Their agony stretches from opening to closing credits, and we are supposed to feel blame and sorrow because people just don’t get the artist’s "genius with a capital G." Not once have I ever been affected by this, because it’s a bunch of you-know-what with a capital B and S.

With that said, "The Time Being" presents us with two painters, one young and one old. The elder man, Warner Dax ( Frank Langella ) has had some success, but is now a hollow shell of a man. Daniel ( Wes Bentley ), the younger man, has had no success yet is equally hollow. Their paths cross in what starts as a sinister mystery but ends in a melodramatic slog through standard-issue secrets and lies. "The Time Being" also presents a "spoiler" that you can easily figure out from the trailer, but of which I am not allowed to speak. This makes me a sad panda, because my biggest problem with "The Time Being" is this spoiler, and how useless the film becomes because of it. Rather than blame you for my agony, I’ll just do the writer thing and pour myself another Scotch.

Here's what I can tell you: Before Daniel’s involvement with Dax, he attempts to peddle his artwork at a local gallery. When approached by a potential buyer with questions, Daniel abruptly brushes him off. We are supposed to be on Daniel’s side—that buyer obviously doesn’t get his black and  white paintings of rotting fruit—but I didn’t find the guy’s question illogical. Daniel could certainly have pulled some snooty, high-art comment out of his ass (or provided the correct explanation) in order to get his painting sold. But no, he has to be difficult because he’s an "ar-TEEST." Ruth Brown once sang that if she couldn't sell it, she was going to sit on it. With Daniel’s attitude, he winds up sitting on all his paintings except one.

An agent for Warner Dax buys that painting, but the purchaser has ulterior motives. Dax is dying, and since he can no longer leave the house, he hires Daniel for a series of increasingly creepy video camera surveillance jobs. Dax is extremely precise about when and where Daniel should record the footage, and will pay $1,000 for each job. Daniel needs the money to support his wife and young son, so he takes the job. He hopes the extra money will keep his willing wife from taking a job to keep the family financially afloat.

Daniel is first asked to shoot a sunrise, then to shoot a museum tour, a sunset, and a playground full of children. That last one is a major red flag-raiser, and to the film's credit, Daniel objects. "I ask you to record a bunch of children playing on a jungle gym, and suddenly I'm some kind of pervert?" screams Dax. Well, yeah dude. Daniel shoots the footage anyway.

Daniel's suspicions continue to rise when he encounters the same woman at multiple Dax-requested video locations. The suspicions reach fever pitch when Daniel finds that Dax has an entire file on him, including his credit report and pictures of his wife and kid. The score ominously portends doom under each of these events. Daniel does some investigating and finds out that spoiler I can't reveal. This should be the climax of the movie, but instead, "The Time Being" suddenly turns into a mentor-student melodrama. The mystery elements are basically forgotten in favor of Daniel's spiritual rebirth, or something like that.

"Artists don't have families," says Warner icily. I erroneously thought this was the theme of "The Time Being," but it is just another element to pad the film's running time. Both Warner and Daniel are in varying degrees of estrangement from their families; Warner has severed all ties and Daniel's dreary, sexist attitude causes his wife and kid to move out. This estrangement seems to get the artistic juices flowing for both men. Daniel looks at Warner's paintings and is inspired to add sellable features like color and naked ass to his canvas. Warner uses Daniel's shot footage to paint what's supposed to be the emotional masterpiece of "The Time Being." Instead, when Warner's big secret sees the painting, the screen fills with crocodile tears and stilted emotion.

Director Nenad Cicin-Sain and co-writer Richard N. Gladstein are both guilty of serving up a totally empty, tonally confused meditation on the creative process. Cicin-Sain aims for importance with a capital I by filling the screen with close-ups of Wes Bentley's irises and paintbrushes swirling in water. The gorgeous, tactile quality of the images, shot by Mihai Malaimare Jr., override their pretention, but putting a  video camera in Bentley’s hands while he stares longingly at mundane objects evokes enormous swatches of Sam Mendes's " American Beauty ."

The actors try their best. As Daniel's frustrated wife, Ahna O’Reilly has an excellent scene of anger. As Daniel's kid, Marco, Aiden Lovekamp sweetly portrays his longing for fatherly attention in his few scenes. Langella's character is practically useless, but he’s game for scenes both quiet and operatic. Bentley plays the blank canvas upon which we are to paint our response. He stayed without a brushstroke of color for  me.

I'm awarding an extra half a star for Jan A.P. Kaczmarek's overactive score, which evokes all manner of dread and conflict while absolutely nothing happens onscreen. It feels so out of place that it's actually quite subversive. Imagine the most overdone, Philip Glass-style horror movie music playing over glossy footage of a university art class, and you have some idea what your eyes and ears are in for while attending "The Time Being."

Odie Henderson

Odie "Odienator" Henderson has spent over 33 years working in Information Technology. He runs the blogs Big Media Vandalism and Tales of Odienary Madness. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire  here .

Now playing

Brian Tallerico

Niani Scott

You Can't Run Forever

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Robert daniels.

Glenn Kenny

Film credits.

The Time Being (2013)

Wes Bentley as Daniel

Sarah Paulson as Sarah

Frank Langella as Warner Dax

Ahna O'Reilly as Olivia

Corey Stoll as Eric

Jeremy Allen White as Gus

• Nenad Cicin-Sain
• Richard N. Gladstein

Latest blog posts

The Best Films of 2024 So Far

Apple TV+'s Daring, Unpredictable Sunny is Summer TV Standout

Apple TV+'s Land of Women is Pretty and Pleasant

The Most Intriguing Festival Films Still Seeking U.S. Distribution